What Changes You Have Made to Prevent Spam? What Worked & What Didnt? POST UP!

Started by doctorbull, October 23, 2010, 03:12:07 PM

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doctorbull

I hope this is the right topic for this thread:

Basically looking for personal experiences as to what Mods or Changes people have made to their forums to combat spam?  What worked for you, what didnt, and did it have a negative impact on user experience at all? I figured a thread like this may really help us all!

Thanks!

So For Me Only One at the Moment:

Re-Capatcha Mod for Registration
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1044

Really hasnt slowed the rate of spammers signing up, but I am seeming to weed out many of the bots, as the spam posts now are usually relavent to what ever the thread they are posting in is about.

Pros: Weeded Out Many Spam Bots
Cons: Still lots of Spam Registrations, Human Spammers Still Get Through
User Experience Change: None, real members interested in signing up are not deterred by entering a capatcha code as its fairly common practice now-a-days

kat

I just set membership to "By approval" and I don't get any Spam, at all.

If you search for new member's usernames, at Google, or wherever, you can usually spot 'em.

YogiBear

As K@ plus install AntiSpam Verification questions. Few will spend time having to think about the answers when they can be spamming three other sites in the same time.
SMF v2.1.3  Mods : Snow & Garland v1.4,  PHP  v.7.4.33

busterone

I don't have the time to manually approve registration requests several times a day, so I installed this mod a little over a year ago. - Stop Spammer.  http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1547 Only 3 actual spammers have slipped past it in the last year. As of this time- The mod has stopped 8157 spammers in a little over a year. I am sure many are the same ones retrying to get in, but they were stopped nonetheless.

As an extra precaution, I have edited the permissions for new members preventing them from editing any additional profile options, which stops them from entering a website to their profile, and prevents them from adding a signature. They must reach a selected number of posts before they move to the next level membergroup and can add a sig.
I have had about a dozen or so that were not in the stop spammer database register, log in and stay only a few minutes, never to return. I presume many of them may have been potential signature spammers, but upon realizing they could not add one to their profile, they left the forum. 

smartdeviceresource

Like busterone I also install StopSpammer Mod and it works amazingly well, previous to that I had to manually check StopForumSpam (on the first SMF board i was on, for which I was a moderator).
after some thought, i've learned to be humble and leave the answering to the experts, until i too am an expert.  sorry to anyone who I've confused, with my answers

Wally.

I did 3 things and my spam dropped to zero.

1) I added a question to the registration process.
2) I installed the stop spammer mod
3) I locked the profiles until they make 10 posts.

Seraphiel

I've never had much spam on my forums and I didn't any mod for it...

If it's 2.0, I can help you harden your forum from bots and even search spiders, if needed. just PM me.

Bookmama

Quote from: Seraphiel on October 27, 2010, 07:57:58 PM
I've never had much spam on my forums and I didn't any mod for it...


Count your blessings and bookmark this thread in case an army of guerilla spammers comes and attacks one day.
Most unconventional way to learn Spanish - experts don't believe it works, but I think it's the easiest way to learn Spanish ever.

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Seraphiel

Quote from: Bookmama on October 27, 2010, 11:35:48 PM
Quote from: Seraphiel on October 27, 2010, 07:57:58 PM
I've never had much spam on my forums and I didn't any mod for it...


Count your blessings and bookmark this thread in case an army of guerilla spammers comes and attacks one day.

forum is over 1 year old, with thousands of members and thousands of post, not a single spam.

There are many things that can cause your forum to be target for spam, you should discover why.

I don't think I need this bookmarked... Will never happen to me, I am serious. If it did, I will write my own mod using anti-spam products to stop spam, but that won't happen.

Wally.

Do you mind if I ask what sort of forum you run that has thousands of members but doesn't attract spammers?

butchs

Does spam still exist?  Could fool me, I have not seen Spam for almost 11 months.
I have been truly inspired by the SUGGESTIONS as I sit on my throne and contemplate the wisdom imposed upon me.

trebul

Quote from: busterone on October 23, 2010, 03:58:55 PM
As an extra precaution, I have edited the permissions for new members preventing them from editing any additional profile options, which stops them from entering a website to their profile, and prevents them from adding a signature. They must reach a selected number of posts before they move to the next level membergroup and can add a sig.

I tried doing this but I'm on a test account and I can still edit things. I don't know what I'm doing wrong?

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Robert.

I didn't nothing and I never got spam. :D A week ago I got my first spammers. :D After that, i just banned them. They never came back

Gary

The only real spamming I get these days is sig spam, but I remedied that by requiring all users to have 1 post before they can edit their profiles. You'll be amazed at how many spammers I see trying to edit their profiles. :P

Once in a while I'll get a spam post or two, I just delete it, and possibly edit the post for another use. I once converted an entire Cutenews database of posts into my SMF data manually using old deleted posts. :P
Gary M. Gadsdon
Do NOT PM me unless I say so
War of the Simpsons
Bongo Comics Fan Forum
Youtube Let's Plays

^ YT is changing monetisation policy, help reach 1000 sub threshold.

busterone

Quote from: trebul on November 18, 2010, 09:28:49 PM
Quote from: busterone on October 23, 2010, 03:58:55 PM
As an extra precaution, I have edited the permissions for new members preventing them from editing any additional profile options, which stops them from entering a website to their profile, and prevents them from adding a signature. They must reach a selected number of posts before they move to the next level membergroup and can add a sig.

I tried doing this but I'm on a test account and I can still edit things. I don't know what I'm doing wrong?
I am sure there may be another way, but what I did was activate deny permissions, then created a new post count group for 0 to 9 posts. I then denied the ability to edit additional profile info. At 10 posts, they move up to the next group that allows profile editing.

Gary

Quote from: busterone on November 20, 2010, 01:47:37 PM
I am sure there may be another way, but what I did was activate deny permissions, then created a new post count group for 0 to 9 posts. I then denied the ability to edit additional profile info. At 10 posts, they move up to the next group that allows profile editing.
Yeah. Deny permissions are far more effective than Disallow.

There's actually a difference between the two. Deny forces removal of a permission, while Disallow will only remove it if no other membergroups assigned to that member have the same permission at allow.
Gary M. Gadsdon
Do NOT PM me unless I say so
War of the Simpsons
Bongo Comics Fan Forum
Youtube Let's Plays

^ YT is changing monetisation policy, help reach 1000 sub threshold.

busterone

Indeed. There is a big difference.
I have been online at the time that a few of them got registered because they were not in the SFS database. It is funny to see them spend 15 minutes attempting to edit their profile and then log off without ever browsing the forum. Most of them never return.  :)

doctorbull

Just wanted to bump this thread to see if there are any new recommendations from other users.  I used the "disallow/deny" editing profile trick, and that helped alot! Thanks!  However i am still getting quite a few daily threads posted with tons of links.  Any thoughts on this, or on how to weed out/discourage the spam trash out without ruining the experience for a legitimate new user?

busterone

Well, since the last post in November, I have joined Project Honeypot and installed httpBL and the Forum Firewall. It is amazing that I haven't even had to manually reject any registration attempts getting flagged lately. I see a ton of them redirected, a bunch of bots that are stopped cold by the firewall, but no actual spammers inside the forum period. I breathe easily these days.  :)

Jerri Blank

I've been struggling with this as well.  We get probably 50 new registrations a day, the vast majority of them spammers.  The board deals with housing issues, so most of them will post an awkwardly written question (because English is not their first language) just so they can show off their sig spam.  So today I deleted then recreated the signature field in the smf_members database to get rid of existing sigs, then I removed the ability for regular users to edit their profiles.  The board I run  is not really a "community" - it's just a place for people to ask a question, get an answer and then move on.  Regular users can't even reply in a thread they didn't create.

I need to implement some method to keep spammers from even registering.

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